Trashing “Spulu,” the new sports streaming venture from ESPN, Fox and WBD, is the favored pastime of people from across the business. The leagues are pissed. Analysts think it’s dead in the water. Competitors dismiss it. The politicians suspect collusion.
According to pretty much everyone, Spulu is a train wreck waiting to happen – which of course makes it a juicy story for journalists to cover. Hence the noise…
To be honest, I’m surprised by the intensity of the animosity towards Spulu. (Not the name, Spulu, which is irritating. I will be glad when and if the real branding launches.) Yes, I get the product, at least based on the reporting so far, has numerous challenges. Success is far from guaranteed. It’s quite possible the thing never sees the light of day, as many predict.
But from my point of view, it’s refreshing to see big media leaders doing something to improve the customer experience for sports viewers – which right now, to be perfectly frank, is dog shit.
What’s happened to sports viewing reminds me of the airline industry. Flying is one of few consumer experiences that has gotten worse in my lifetime, despite the massive increases in technology, productivity, and consumer interest. The same can be said for sports in the age of streaming.
Games are spread out among a dozen different streaming platforms and hard to find. Just look at Major League Soccer, Lionel Messi is the biggest thing to happen to the sport in this country since Pele came to New York. Yet MLS games are only available on Apple TV+, the streaming platform with far and away the smallest audience.
The entire sports viewing experience has become more expensive, more confusing, and much less enjoyable.
However, you’ll get nothing more than vacant lip service from the owners and leagues about improving the fan viewing experience. All that interests them is ensuring the market includes multiple deep-pocketed buyers. The more competition for their rights, the higher the price they can charge. It’s why MLS took the money from Apple. It’s hard to blame them. And they’re not alone.
Take the NBA: reportedly Adam Silver seeks to triple the league’s current rights deal. Let’s think about that for a moment: three times the money for a product that is actually getting worse. The players go through long bouts of boredom and disinterest during the regular season. Stars routinely sit out games for no reason. The All-Star game is a joke. The NFL is taking over Christmas Day. The league doesn’t start to get interesting until the playoffs begin.
Yet Silver and the owners want a ton more money for the broadcast rights. And they will get it because of the premium advertisers and programmers place on live programming. The ratings for most NBA games may be marginal, but the league still can generate audiences at a scale superior to other types of programming.
The leagues are behaving like monopolies, in some cases sanctioned by the government, and ruthlessly imposing price increases. As in the case with any entity that has unchecked market power, the biggest loser is the consumer. Spulu, or any alliance of media networks, represents a threat, which is why they don’t like it.
As I said, Spulu may not be the right answer to the problem. But at least there are a few people with the power to effect change attempting to simplify the viewing experience. It’s not perfect, far from it. And no one doubts that Bog Iger and the other CEOs have more self-serving motives.
But the big media companies in this country, unlike the leagues, are not monopolies. In fact, in the streaming age they are much more attuned than ever to their consumers. Under no scenario could they get away with tripling the cost for their products and stay competitive.
I have no problem if Spulu leads to media companies working together on rights negotiations. Yes, I understand on one level that sort of collusion is anathema to any card-carrying capitalist (which I am), but as I mentioned, the leagues and their billionaire owners are operating monopolies. The deck is stacked too heavily in their favor. Sports is more than a business, it’s a public good that should be affordable to everyone. I hope the politicians expressing concern with Spulu keep that in mind and take the time to investigate the behavior of the owners.
Bob Iger seems to be leading the charge. I’ve been critical of his handling of ESPN, but give credit where credit is due: he recognizes that the fans are being jobbed and is trying to do something about it. A win with Spulu, or something like it, that improves and simplifies the viewing experience for fans would be a significant addition to Iger’s already impressive legacy. I’m pulling for you, Bob.
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